1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an identification system and, more specifically, to a system suitable for identifying whether or not an identification article such as an IC card, or an article identifying unit is indeed authorized.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional magnetic card is well known in such an article identification system. The magnetic card has a magnetic coating stripe on which a key code, a confidential number, an account number and so on are magnetically recorded. These magnetically recorded contents, e.g., the key code are known to at least bank personnel because a card holder as a user has his duty to disclose his key code to the bank. In general, the magnetically recorded information may be relatively easily accessed by everyone. In view of such an easy access, the private confidential information of the conventional magnetic card may not be kept secret.
Instead of the conventional magnetic card, an IC card incorporating an IC (integrated circuit) module has recently been proposed. Accordingly, no one can easily gain access to the confidential information stored in the IC module.
Although it is very hard to read out the confidential information from the IC card, there is no way to identify the authorized card holder if the IC card per se is forged. Moreover, another difficulty exists in whether the IC card terminal as the card identifying unit is authorized or not.
An object of the present invention is to provide an identification system in which when the identification system performs the identification for the apparatus to be identified, this identification can be realized by simple hardware and software and furthermore the confidential data cannot be easily analyzed nor imitated by an unauthorized person.